Trump’s childhood home in Queens set to be auctioned

New York: Donald Trump’s childhood home, a five-bedroom house in the Queens neighbourhood here, is set to be auctioned, with the sellers hoping its brief connection with the soon-to-be US President will help attract a premium price for the property.

A report in the New York Times said the butter-coloured home with a beamed roof was built by Trump’s real estate developer father Fred Trump and the young Trump lived there from birth to age 4.

A small room upstairs, where Trump junior was said to have slept, is decorated in the red, blue and white colours of America’s flag and downstairs a picture on a shelf reads ‘Dream Big’.

The house is to be auctioned off today by Paramount Realty USA, a firm that specialises in similar sales and is banking on the property’s brief connection with the soon-to-be 45th president of the United States, the report added.

“It’s unique, and it has intangible value that goes beyond just the physical real estate,” said Misha Haghani, the principal of Paramount.

The company is selling it on behalf of Michael Davis, a real estate prospector who bought it last year for slightly under USD 1.4 million with the intention of flipping it.

“The value of Trump’s name, the value of the President-elect living there as a child, an infant, that value is impossible to define.”

The NYT report said the house had originally been scheduled for auction last October when Trump was the Republican candidate for president, but the sale was postponed when interest grew substantially closer to the election.

Recently, during a television talk show appearance, Trump had hinted that he might be interested in buying the home himself. Haghani said interest in the house has been extraordinarily high but he would not guess as to how much the house would sell for.

“You’re not actually getting anything of tangible value for the Trump association, it’s all intangible,” Haghani said in the NYT report.

“It’s like a baseball card,” he added. “It’s whatever it’s worth to you.”